


Not a Lie

by quigonejinn



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:24:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>You never expected to survive the war.  You never expected that Peggy Carter would love you, let alone marry you.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Lie

At the end of the day, you come back to the house. The lights are off; the housekeeper collected the mail and left it on the dining room table. You get dinner from the refrigerator and heat it on the stove, then get a beer and take it down in the living room. You turn the radio on; you open the windows. You turn a light on, and you eat by yourself, listening to the Dodgers game. The game ends a quarter past nine, and you turn it to a jazz station and listen and read, quietly, until ten thirty. Then, you step onto the patio and have a cigarette: it is only you and the moon on the lawn. 

After your cigarette, you go back inside, close the windows, check the doors to make sure they’re locked, and you climb the stairs to the bedroom. There is a part of you that recognizes how empty the house is. There is a part of your heart, Steve Rogers, that recognizes how quiet and still and steady your days are.

On the landing, you feel a hand on your shoulder, and you turn.

…

You have gone on aging, and in the morning, you wake alone in bed. You shower and brush your teeth; you get dressed for work, and you go downstairs and say good morning to the housekeeper who let herself in at the morning: she has coffee and toast waiting for you, along with your lunch in a paper back. 

You thank her, ask how her son is doing these days, and the two of you talk a little. You mention the shirt that you left on the back of the armchair, where you spilled a little of your dinner. She says she’ll take care of it, and after you put your coat and hat on, you drive to the Metro station, where you take the train into Washington. You are close to fifty years old, Steve Rogers. You live in a suburb of Washington, and you work in a division named something like Archival Map Control and Topography, and most of the time, that is all it is. A department of the agency that you work for requires a map. Your people make sure that the proper clearances have been obtained, then locate the best map for their purposes.

Once in the while, though, there is an urgent call for something more, something that calls upon skills that you have developed in over twenty years of serving your country. Have you ever known a different life? Maybe during the war. You see yourself in the mirror, still a small man, still narrow-shouldered, with gray in your hair and glasses that you acquired at the age of forty-six. There is a wedding ring on the left hand, but Peggy has been traveling for three weeks, and you haven’t had any word. You didn’t expect any. You’ve learned not to, over the years.

At lunchtime, you take your lunch in a bag, nod to your secretary, and eat on a park bench. At the end of the day, you take the Metro back to your suburban parking station, and then you drive back to the house and eat your dinner in the quiet, then smoke your daily cigarette out on the patio. 

You never expected to survive the war. You never expected that Peggy Carter would love you, let alone marry you. This is a quiet life, a steady life. By no means is it perfect, but you, Steve Rogers, have always been wise enough to see true worth: in the morning, as you’re walking down the driveway and whistling to yourself, lunch in hand and coat over your left arm because the morning is warm, you feel a hand on your shoulder. 

You turn.

…

One night, you drive home from the station, and you pause. Instead of coming through the front door, you take another turn around the block, park down the street, then slip around to the back of the house, through the clump of pine trees near the bed of rhododendrons 

“You’re late,” she says, softly. 

Peggy is sitting on the patio: she is sitting on one of the chairs on the patio. She is wearing a gray suit, and from what you can see, she doesn’t look hurt. She has all the normal number of arms and legs; there aren’t any visible bandages, and you relax. She smiles at you and comes towards you. A few seconds later, a security guy comes crashing around the side of the house and skids a little on the grass, then realizes that he almost pulled his gun on — 

“They aren’t very good,” you say, once the man has gone back to the car. 

“Not everybody spent years running missions in Nazi-occupied France,” Peggy answers, and you laugh. 

“That was a long time ago,” you say, and it’s true, but as her real answer to the question on your face, Peggy tucks her hand through yours.

Then, she steps close and leans against you. She is taller than you, so she has to lean her face down, but you can feel her taking deep breaths of the way you smell. You can feel how hard she is holding your hand: it makes the bones hurt a little, but you just settle your arm around her waist. Peggy is taller than you; the two of you spent fifteen years living in Europe after the war before she was promoted internally to a primarily strategy and synthesis position overseeing others who ran agents. Most of the time, that is all it is. 

Once in a while, there is more. This time, there was almost a month more. 

As the two of you walk into the dark house and go up the stairs, Peggy doesn’t let go of your hand: the house is dark and still. The two of you never had children. Hard enough for a married woman to stay in the field after the war. Having children was never a possibility. You know, too, that strictly speaking, for her career’s sake, Peggy should never have married. You’d call it flattery, but you know, at the end, she loved you, and you loved her. The two of you understood each other, and there were only so many sacrifices it would be fair to expect. 

Sitting in bed afterwards, her head tucked against your shoulder, Peggy opens up her suitcase and shows you the souvenirs she brought back from London. You know that isn’t the only place she went during her weeks away. 

This isn’t a perfect life, but sitting in bed with a Harrods souvenir chocolate tin in your lap and Peggy humming in the bathroom while she starts a bath, and she asks if you want to come in and talk to her, and you swing your legs out of bed and —

You feel a hand on your shoulder. 

You turn.

…

This isn’t a perfect life, and it isn’t the life that you might be expected to imagine for yourself, Steve Rogers; your body is healthy, but small and aging. Your wife has a job that takes her away for weeks at a time, and she can’t tell you what she does or why, this time, there are security agents posted outside the door. From time to time, when she is around, when she can talk to you, the two of you fight. Both of you have strong personalities. Both of you have jobs that are difficult and demanding and important. 

A good life, not a perfect one: the two of you fight, and Peggy spends time away from home. There are long stretches when you feel the quiet places in your life. Still, when Peggy comes home, she holds your hand for two days straight. Still, one day, the housekeeper catches you as you’re heading out the door and explains that she might have to leave early because her son is home from school and not feeling well. You tell her to go home now. You and Peggy can manage, and that night, for dinner, the two of you make omelets. On your way to the train station, you stop by a place that sells wine; you pick a bottle with a name that you remember from your days in Paris.

Peggy puts on an apron. You chop vegetables.

“Any word from Bucky?” she says.

“I got a postcard from him a week before you came home,” you answer. ”It sounds he’s heading to Australia. One step ahead of somebody he owes money to, if I know Bucky.”

“Australia?”

“The one with kangaroos.” 

Peggy laughs.

You feel —

…

You feel a hand on your shoulder, and you turn. You know your wife is in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, but in front of your eyes, you see Peggy as she was on her wedding night, wearing your shirt, wedding ring gleaming on the fourth finger of her left hand. There is no gray in her hair; she looks young and strong. 

“This is a lie,” Emma Frost says.

“Happiness isn’t a lie,” you answer. 

Eventually, though, Steve Rogers, you close your eyes and accept the telepathic suggestion.

When you wake, a ball game from May 1941 is on the radio.


End file.
